“Eminem’s autobiographical acting debut in 8 Mile marked the high point of the trickster’s relevance.” SN No one expected much from the movie. Sure, Eminem was at his peak, but on the surface this looked like a high-profile vanity project. However, the movie made “hip-hop as inspirational as Rocky with Em rapping about the kind of poverty he grew up in – and showing the superhuman rhyme powers that got him out of it.” RS’09

If Em’s “‘Rabbit’ character was 8 Mile’s Rocky Balboa, then ‘Lose Yourself’ was the movie’s ‘Eye of the Tiger.’” PD It is Eminem’s “definitive anthem, a vivid, white-knuckle account of the anxiety and self-doubt he grappled with during his earliest forays into performing.” MX As Jonathan Bogart writes, this is “the moment when he sounded as urgent and necessary as anyone’s ever been.” DS He also calls this “the finest postmillennial portrait of the pressures of lower-middle-class life in America.” DS

“The cinema-ready piano intro” CS suggests “how epic this song is going to be,” CS but the listener is still unprepared for “the force unleashed when Mr. Mathers begins rhyming over a head-nodding guitar riff.” CS “This anthem captured the raw intensity and emotion that comes with performing” BX and may be “the most lyrically complex hip-hop song to ever hit #1 on the pop charts” PD with Eminem “tongue-twisting his way through a variety of internal rhyme schemes.” PD

While Eminem had landed three #1’s in the UK, “Lose Yourself” marked his first trip to the top of the U.S. charts. With a dozen weeks in the pole position, “the tense, grunge-y” SN track became the longest-running #1 rap song on the Billboard Hot 100 AB’00 and has been called the most popular rap song in history. SV

Note: Footnotes (raised letter codes) refer to sources frequently cited on the blog. Numbers following the letter code indicate page numbers. If the raised letter code is a link, it will go directly to the correct page instead of the home page of a website. You can find the sources and corresponding footnotes on the “Lists” page in the “Song Resources” section.